Promoting Good Practice Has Moved!

Dear All,

I have decided to move this blog to a more "obvious" address, which means now this blog will be at: www.promotinggoodpractice.co.uk
If you have signed up to follow this blog, please sign up to follow the blog at this new address, as this blog will no longer be updated.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

Adeline Chalmers

How to Get Children to go to School - An Innovative Project from Spain!

Gabriele Guazzo of CITTALIA (Project
Manager of +RESPECT) and I

In May 2011 I was asked to present at two of the three seminars part of the +RESPECT Conference in Rome organised and headed by CITTALIA. As I had to literally run from presenting at one seminar (on the media) to give my speech at the other seminar on promoting good practice, I missed some of the fantastic work described in the seminar on sharing good practice. Luckily, the organisers had arranged for an evening meal after the conference where we had the opportunity to socialise with the other speakers at the conference.

Tomas, Maria & Andres at
+RESPECT Conference, Rome

I was told the meal was at 9 p.m at an Italian restaurant (What else could it have been?! We were in Rome!). As I am someone who is always punctual, I got there for 9 p.m. sharp, forgetting that this was Rome and in Italy 9 p.m. means 9.15, perhaps even 9.20... I was standing opposite the restaurant, admiring the way Italians talk with their entire body, especially with their hands; when someone came to me and asked if I was Adelina (luckily, I was!) as they are the Spanish group who also presented at the same conference.

Tomas and Maria at +RESPECT
Conference, Rome, May 2011

They politely introduced themselves: Maria del Mar Gonzales and Tomas Robles Guirado work for the Social Services in Puerto Lumbreras, Spain and Andres Lledo is the Chief Constable for the police in the same town. They kindly invited me to join their table whilst the rest of the group slowly began to turn up. They, just like me, had turned up on time and then discovered they even had time for a "before official meal" appetiser before everyone else arrived.
Whilst chatting to them, I discovered they had also given a presentation about their project at the same seminar on good practice, only that I had missed it as I was giving a presentation in the other seminar on the media.
Over 10 years ago, Maria del Mar worked in education in a neighbourhood where the majority of the children came from disadvantaged families, mainly Roma. She realised that there is a serious problem with school absenteeism but also that there was no support for the children after school and decided to do something about it!

Children during the workshop
learning through arts and crafts

She designed a programme to address this by creating workshops after school to help children with their homework as well as getting children who had dropped out of school back into education through arts and crafts. Initially it was difficult to get the children engaged, as this had never been done before and they were scared of the unknown. However, this challenge was easily overcome by Maria’s ingenious mind! She promoted and indeed started out the workshops as fun, extracurricular activities, such as: organising theatre plays, doing nature walks, photography sessions, music groups and so on. She realised she had to keep these children active and entertained!

A changed attitude to learning

Once the children were hooked, she was able to slowly add educational materials from the school curriculum in a fun way into the workshops. Because children really enjoyed the workshops and were very keen to attend, she was then able to put as a condition that they have to attend school in order to be able to participate in the workshops ...and it worked! Moreover, children also got certificates of attendance, which gave them recognition for something they were doing! Schools absenteeism was reduced massively and they even got children to realise things they were really good at, that perhaps through regular school classes they would not have been able to identify. Some children went from being closed up, not communicating and basically failing in school to successfully going to high school and working towards obtaining an art qualification. Other children who initially were violent and disturbed the class have now become passionate about music and have even joined the town music band.

But, what is it that changed these children’s attitudes? 

Long-lasting friendships are created
at the workshops

From what I gathered from both Maria and Tomas; in the workshops, they LISTEN to the children; they show them that they DO care about them and that these workshops are a safe, peaceful place where they are seen as individuals. They also integrate into the workshops the children's ideas and interests and so, they are an integral part of the design of a workshop. When they first come, Tomas works closely with the children to break down the barriers they have, by talking to them about things that interest them such as sports or cartoons. Once the barriers are broken down, the children integrate easier with the rest of the group and actively participate in the activities, sometimes even excelling and discovering talents they never thought they had! The workshops offer the children a place where they can make friends and tie long-lasting friendships with people who understand them and more often than not, are just in the same situation as they are.
It is amazing how by simply listening, one can fix such complex problems!

How to Get Your Charity or NGO in Newspaper Articles

Michal Siewniak

One of the best people I have ever had the opportunity to work with, and now a personal friend of mine, is Michal Siewniak. This man has the energy of a lion, he is like a vortex of happiness and he gets people doing things! I believe everyone involved in community work in Hertfordshire has heard of Michal one way or another! He has done some amazing work over the past 4 years (some of which I will talk about in future posts) since he has been involved in community work, but one of the key things he is very good at is his excellent relationship with the media. The pile of newspaper articles he has been in stands over a foot tall, and this is just articles from the past 2 years! Newspapers he was featured in vary from local papers to UK based Polish national papers. I was invited to speak at the ERLAI Conference in Brussels in March 2011 about cases of good practice around engaging the media to foster integration. I immediately thought of Michal Siewniak and in fact invited him along to do the presentation with me! It appears our double act was very successful, as a month later I was invited by Italian Region of Puglia and an NGO in Rome called CITTALIA to share cases of good practice at the +RESPECT Conference and three of their seminars: one in Brussels and two in Rome. If you want your charity to appear more in the newspapers to publicise your work and generate some interest, here are six key things I learnt from Michal’s experience of working with the media as well as other organisations that have had successes in this area:

Michal and I at ERLAI
Conference in Brussels

1. Contact them! Charities and Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) find that often the same people attend meetings, events or seminars over and over again, and they need other means of making their work known to a wider audience. It may sound as a no-brainer; however one of the best ways of doing that is by contacting your local newspaper and asking them if they could publish an article. Write the article first, make sure it is very clear and to the point, proofread it and put your organisation’s contact details at the end, so people can get in touch!

2. Use influential people! If you find it hard to get through to your local paper or to get them to publicise your article (or even attend your events), you can start the ball rolling by inviting them to meetings or events you run where influential people attend. Most will be happy to come out and write an article about your project if the Mayor or local MP attends! You could find then that most influential people also have reporters that they have a good relationship with, so you could get more links that way.

Michal and Housing Minister,
Grant Shapps at Westminster

3. A direct line is always best! Once you get a newspaper reporter to your event, you have the opportunity to forge a relationship, personal contact is always better than an email! Now you have a contact you can speak to within a newspaper and you can email them directly articles to publish the work of your charity. Like in every aspect of business (despite being a charity or not for profit organisation, everything works on the principles of running a business), maintain the relationship with your contact via phone and email even if you don’t have a particular article in mind to send them, that way you will keep the relationship fresh!

4. The story matters! Be prepared to put your charity or NGO’s name and fame on the back seat when writing an article – people (and therefore, newspapers) are interested in the story, in “what happened”?, and more often than not, they are not going to be drawn to an article that reads: “charity does good work” because charities are there to do just that. However, they are going to be drawn to an article that talks about a story, about something that happened! People love stories, that is why the film industry is so successful!

Michal and I at EU Parliament
Brussels October 2010

5. Put your business hat on! Speak to your local paper, see what they are interested in, try to learn “their side of the story”, what motivates and interests them. Michal found that one of the newspapers he made links with (through one of the influential people he had at his events) was interested in running articles in mirror pages: one in English and the other in Polish, so the next community event Michal run had a massive two pages feature in the newspaper, one in each language. Michal was pleased as this meant that Polish people could use this as an opportunity to learn English, seeing the same article written in both languages, whilst the newspaper was interested in expanding their customer base to the Polish community, so they can sell more newspapers.

6. You never know who is reading! A story that appeared in a newspaper in Romania about the Roma Community Project in Marza, Dolj (Romania) (again, it was about the project, not the NGO which run it) attracted a massive amount of anonymous funding, as well as government funding, as a direct result of the newspaper articles they appeared in! From the first article that appeared, it spiralled into many other articles, some even covering two pages, and this made the project even more known and more successful, so more press coverage was created and so on and so on.
I hope you find the tips above useful and if you discover other ways to get your work in the paper and would like to share them, please send me an email at adelina@benadec.co.uk and let me have YOUR story.

Phenomenal Project on Romanian Roma Engagement in Community Development (in Oltenia Region of Romania)

Presenting at the EDI Conference
in Vienna, July 2010

After I presented at the EDI Conference in Vienna in July 2010, I took advantage of this location within train-reaching distance of Eastern Europe and I boarded a train onwards to Romania to meet a few potential partners for some transnational (European) projects. 

I searched online NGOs in Romania that worked with Roma and I came across an organisation in SW Romania, in the region of Oltenia, called ARDC (Asociatia Romana pentru Dezvoltare Comunitara - The Romanian Association for Community Development). 

Dana Calendatu of ARDC

When I went to meet Dana Calendatu and her superb team at their HQ in Craiova (the "capital" of Oltenia region) I found out about this amazing project carried out by ARDC about 5 years ago, which had a massive impact on the communities and the village they lived in.

Their original project aim was 

Children in Marza, Dolj,
Romania 2004

to attempt to solve identified issues within a community by piloting a new type of approach to community development. This was about involving children and young people in the process of identifying the issue and presenting this back to the community through art. This was tested out in 3 counties within Oltenia – SW Romania.

Marza was the only community where the majority of the population was Roma 80% and to which the final outcome with such a big success that led to building a church in the village; this then spiralled out to wider improvements in the village, including roads, public wells and even a school.

Young people in the camp doing
capacity building training

A young people’s camp was organised and attended by 12 children and young people aged between 9 -14. The children were selected by the Roma community leader and the ARDC facilitator. The camp was also attended by the Roma leader. The community leader’s participation was key as the young people were better able to relate to him and they knew him and respected his authority. Through this camp the community leader himself learnt about community development and the process that was due to follow and he became involved throughout the project. The children who were selected were going to school and had excellent dancing, music and poetry skills.

The role-play delivered by the
young people in front of the the village

In the camp the young people worked with a group of young actors to help them improve their acting skills. After returning from the camp, the young people went through a process of identifying and prioritising community issues. The biggest priority was identified and focus groups were organised in order to create a theme for a role-play. The summary of the role-play theme and issues was sent to the actors which from this created a role-play of about 25 min. 3 days in a row they worked with the kids to teach them their lines.

Article in the paper
speaking about the project

The only organisations involved were who were the project managers from ARDC, Church Association of Oltenia (Mitropolia Olteniei) si Salcuta Parish Council. 
The Church Association of Oltenia helped organise a launch about the church project at their HQ which attracted media attention and a massive article appeared in the paper about ARDC's initiative. This then helped attract donations to help build the church. It was not long until the story was picked up by other papers and more and more paper articles appeared about Marza and the amazing work the village had taken upon themselves to carry out and improve their own lives. 

The Church in Marza built by the community

The impact of the children’s role play was massive – not only on their parents and the local adult population, but also on the children themselves who are now adults and remember the camp, the actors, the role play and the fact that their wish came true – building the church.

The church was built by them and local Roma people are very proud of it, take good care of it as they worked hard to have it built.

The key to success was the local Roma community leader, brave but warm, the mayor which also wanted to change the community and the mentality of the people living there.